Breather
by Of Miracles And Men
Summary: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and Diana finds herself among their multitudinous ranks. But when she goes to vent her fury, she finds a vitriolic, volatile friend instead in the form of the New God Orion. In doing so, she may find that she wants-and needs-more than friendship from him. There will be much fighting, sarcasm, and eventually, more than either expect.


The relationship between Bruce and Zatanna was kept on the down-low, but that sure as hell didn't mean people didn't notice it.

They always seemed in close proximity with one another even when duties and time should have dictated otherwise. Constantly, they held conversations together in private, found precious time to share lunches together in the bustling mess hall, were often found to be walking in quiet, furtive conversation down the voluminous halls of the Watchtower. Once, they were even discovered together in the close proximity of his security panel office, 'improving' the stability and protection of the JLU's neural networks.

Everyone knew that they attempted discretion in order to dissuade rumors and gossip from either of them. But considering the people that they worked with _that_ was a ludicrous idea in itself.

Unexpectedly, the hearsay spread like wildfire. Discussions were instigated in the hallways and over lunch trays, prompting half-truths and assumptions provided by the people who were last knowledgeable about the subject, or the people that the gossip revolved about. And for a while, it became the biggest source of news on the Watchtower. It was on the tip of every tongue, every start to a conversation, every icebreaker to an introduction, and it didn't look like it would recede anytime soon.

After all, no one ever thought that _the_ Batman, the brooding, frightening Dark Knight of the League, he of _all_ people, who disapproved of relations of any romantic entendre in the league, would attempt it. Fewer believed that the outspoken, stubborn man was the one who decided and eventually proposed the beginning of the relationship with (only adding to the proverbial icing on the cake) with one of the most striking ladies of the League.

Poor Dick. He had never found himself more popular on the Tower, as people began to pester and needle him for details as soon as they saw the tell-tale Nightwing emblem approach from their peripheral. His discomfort only increased after Bruce made him swear (read: threatened in no uncertain terms) to not even divulge the _slightest_ bit of information. Eventually, with Clark's permission, he jumped at the chance to temporarily retire to patrolling Blüdhaven until the whole scandal lost its novelty.

Poor Diana, who could not retreat as Dick Grayson could from the public eye. As Bruce and Zatanna's relationship gossiped about, so too did the gossip turn to her. Her feelings toward Bruce had not exactly been subtle, and now they were being quickly thrown back in her face.

"It's funny, though." Diana heard one day, as she changed to civilian clothes in the locker room and heard a girl on the other side of the lockers chatter with her friend in a mindless, callous prattle. They were unaware of the possible company they might share in the room.

"Wonder Woman tries the best she can to get into Batman's pants, and he doesn't even bat an eye. But when Zatanna shows up…"

There was laughter, silver and secretive as her companion voiced her opinion, "Well, _I've_ heard that they've known each other for years; way, way back. And besides, I guess he'd be into girls who act a _little_ classier."

"_But not by much."_ The other voice returned, and the light, taunting laughter resumed as they closed their locker doors and exited the room, leaving Diana with a dash of red flushed across her cheeks as if she had been slapped. She felt rigid, frozen in place, a hand on her locker door, immobile like the rest of her.

There was an unbearable, tense moment of hot shame before she exhaled sharply and long, slender fingers clenched in a flood of adrenaline-fueled volatility. Instantaneously, the locker door crumpled like paper in her hand, acquiescing to her strength, yet she ignored it as a consuming feeling of embarrassment twisted her gut, accompanied by its sister emotion of...she paused in her mental tirade of self-deprecation to idly wonder what it was.

Ah, yes; _disgust._

She was disgusted by what she had heard; disgusted with the disrespect aimed not only at her (but also in a rush of instinctive Amazonian protectiveness, towards Zatanna) and disgusted with the way they illustrated her, as a pesky, persistent _whore_. She slammed the door with a noise of exertion (thought it required none from her) and watched it bounce off the frame it was meant to conform to and creak pathetically, swinging back to hit the next locker door over.

Diana allowed herself a moment of blankly watching it swing and listening to the blood rush in her ears, torrential and violent before she turned on her heel and stormed away out the opposite exit (for if she ran into those two women, Hera knew what would happen).

Glossy black hair spilled over her shoulders as the door parted with a hiss of air and nearly found herself colliding with one she least expected to meet in her livid, raging fury.

The person paused as she exchanged fury for a moment of disoriented balance, and watched her expression of ferocity as she looked up to identify the perpetrator cool into embarrassment. Fueled by adrenaline upon identifying her companion in near collision, she assumed an awkward yet pretty smile.

"Oh. Hello, Bruce." Diana said, assuming normality for the sake of an apology to him.

"Diana." Bruce said, respectfully and out of fellow comradeship, but nothing more. In the resuming awkward silence, she fumbled for a topic, quickly, quickly, before he decided she was not worth her time. He stepped forward to fall into a walk down the curving hall, assuming she would follow (she did), and ignored the stares of those who passed them in the hallway and made their own conclusions about the encounter.

"Are you going anywhere?" she asked curiously.

"The cafeteria." He responded, and she began to match his pace, arms swaying carefree in those comfortable civilian clothes at that place called American of Eagle (yes, an odd name, but she still did enjoy their merchandise).

"Could you stand for some company?" she inquired, folding her hands in front of her and inclining her head to look at him. She watched as he hesitated for an audible moment that did not escape her.

"I'm sorry," she said, not feeling very sorry but maintaining etiquette, "were you planning to meet someone?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Zatanna."

The feeling of embarrassment mingling with surprise from her surprise was akin to ice injected into her veins combined with a burn in the pit of her stomach.

"A thousand pardons." She replied, biting the inside of her cheek to restrain herself from saying something that would be unwise. He replied almost too quickly, as if he knew of the turmoil raging inside her, "It's fine. There's no need to apologize."

There was another awkward silence between the two of them, one that was stifling and tangible. Diana fought for words to come that were polite, words that she wanted to spit out with jealousy and spite but did not wish to encounter in that moment she had with him.

"How…how _are_ you and Zatanna?"

Bruce arched an eyebrow but made no comment on hers, seeking a reply to this most unexpected question.

"Fine."

The silence resumed.

"And are you finding her accommodating?" Diana forced the question between her teeth, watching as they rounded the corners, and came closer and closer to the mess hall.

"Yes." He replied, arching a brow behind his mask at the choice of words. They continued down another corner, as the incline of the hall became sloped and she rubbed a temple, calling upon Hera for strength and Athena for wisdom.

"Bruce?" she asked, as they descended down the final hall.

"Yes?"

"Are you…happy with her?" she inquired, and the question that tore her apart as she spoke it.

Bruce was silent as he considered this question as they stood before the door, she waiting for a response and he for the words momentarily denied him, and spoke.

"If by 'happy' you mean 'better than I have been in a long time…'" he said, and he stepped towards the door as he said this, as it slid open with a breath of air. Diana could see a table where a young, pretty magician was waiting for her date. "Then, yes."

He exchanged goodbyes with her and withdrew into the room, as the door closed behind him with the silent sound of thunder that crashed in her ears.

* * *

She stormed into the training hall in an unspeakable tirade of emotions. Punching bags of cracked Styrofoam and rusting chains dangled from the corners of the ceiling while plastering the walls were targets punctured through and around the surface from which they hung. Used gloves, strewn about with laces that curved and arched on the floor were stacked in the precarious pyramids of weights thrown into the corners of the room, while dummies to abuse and break had been shifted over to lean on the walls in their disuse.

With unrestrained rage that had been denied her for the most of her trip down to the room, she tore her scarf from her neck, to discard it without a backwards glance on the floor. She stalked over to a punching back, adjusting her immaculate silver bracelets as she strode to a punching bag and stood about it.

For a moment, she considered violent catharsis, as she replaced the image of the bag with the countenance of a woman whom all of her anger, all of her fury, was projected onto, and stood, staring at it for another second. Then a fist shot out; she was unaware it had had been balled up; she watched the force of the punch ripple out into the recesses of the bag. It shuddered, chains clinking and clattering together as it swung back, shivering with the raw force.

It was…_satisfying_.

With another punch from her left, she watched it careen to the side, interrupted in its journey back, and then aimed a kick at it that made the chain holding it to the beam it was suspended from jingle, a dissonant clanking, clinking sound.

After this, she paused, searching for breath that had escaped her surprisingly quickly and then resumed. Hair flew about her face in a tumbledown mess, paralleling the mad scramble of emotions and passions and desires that fought within. Teeth bared and eyes narrowed, releasing it on the poor punching bag that had deserved no such treatment but received it from her.

Each punch she threw, each blow, each kick, each shudder and shiver received in turn from the bag only goaded her further, further as she continued, further as she became unaware of her surroundings, unaware of the pain, unaware of anything save her and her exercise.

And it left her certainly unaware of the person who entered the room as the door to the training hall and watched for an amused moment as she grappled with her personal demons. It was in the moment that she paused once more, admiring the multiple indentations her fists had imprinted upon the bag, when she heard barely familiar voice dryly interrupt the silence.

"What a rage that possesses the fairest of the league."

Bewildered, Diana turned, wiping the sweat from her brow and adjusting jeans that were beginning to ride low on her hips, to see the least unexpected member of the multitudes of people on the roster of the league standing before her. His arms crossed as he leaned on the wall, gazing down upon her with an unsubtle distaste communicated in the posture of his body and the tone of his voice.

"Orion." She said. "I didn't notice you were there."

"No, I cannot say that you did." He replied, as he walked towards another punching bag not too far away from hers, within speaking distance, "One would say that the bloodlust for battle consumed you."

"You're one to talk." She replied, and he did not take offense at this, as he approached and then stood before a bag to exert the same amount of vehemence Diana did with less effort than she, emotions unreadable underneath his helmet.

"Perhaps. But I am not propelled by rage over the petty things that you are." He replied, and he smashed a fist into the bag, prompting the chains to assume an almost musical quality.

She wavered in surprise, a fist paused merely centimeters away from the leather that she had previously beat her knuckles into. It was with resounding astonishment and resuming fury that made her realize that Orion, one of the most isolated and antisocial members of the league knew of the gossip encompassing her, but chose to mock her for it as well.

"Petty?" she asked, and she fixed a cool, tempered gaze upon him as he continued to release his own implacable tension, "You would call my emotions and despair _petty?"_

"I would not even call it despair. I would call it the jealousy of a shrew," Orion said as the bag gasped with air and swung to the side as he retracted his fist, "one who is unable to respect the desires of her comrade and seeks to intrude upon that which is not hers."

"Do you wish for a fight?" Diana asked, lowly, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed as she looked to him. She turned her body away from the previous object of her anger and then to him as he did to her, unperturbed by what he had instigated as he looked into the eyes of one of the most powerful beings on the planet.

But not one of the most powerful beings on _his_ planet.

"If you are done mewling with your self-pity, then yes." He replied; her brow twitched at the insult.

"Hypocrite," Diana practically spat, at a loss for why he had initiated such a fight and as to why he had any desire to, but found the reason unnecessary as she allowed her long-lost patience to return for the moment. He crossed in a few paces to the end of the room and stood, waiting for her to ready herself.

"Perhaps." He replied. "But I do so in the hopes that I can one day overcome it, unlike you. Ready?"

Diana assumed silence, but she was more than ready as she prepared herself, and assumed a position with which to fight.

"Wonderful." He replied dryly, and she lunged forward without any provocation with a fist towards his jaw. He blunted the blow with his arm and pushed it past him, to return in kind one of his own; it grazed her jaw as she dodged past it.

"You're a foul-mouthed excuse for a warrior," she retorted back with the serenity that she prayed Athena could grant her as she rocked back onto her heels and then returned to the balls of her toes, muscles coiling in her arms that sprang forward to his ribcage. The raw power forced him to accept the brunt of her blow with a hollow grunt.

"Is that so," he replied with biting sarcasm in his voice as he shot his fist upward to her chin, forcing her to look up to the fluorescent, glaring lights of the hall and then back down again. A raw numbness spread through the entirety of her jaw.

She kicked forward and knocked rather satisfyingly into his side, making him hiss as he took a step towards her. He invaded her personal space as he hooked forward and gave her cause to look to her side with a sharp turn of her neck, abrupt and unexpected. A battle cry poised on her lips, she jabbed forward only to have him feint and bob to his side in order to clock her ear; there was a faint ringing that echoed in her ears and a sharp biting itch started at the side of her head.

"Ow." She glared, teeth bared at him.

"Indeed." He replied; their fists brushed past each other and hit nothing but air, prompting them both to step back to regain their bearings.

"Am I still a 'foul-mouthed excuse?'" he asked, politely, and he arched an eyebrow behind his helmet.

"Come over here if you're brave enough and we'll find out." She replied, and a several long strands of black hair spilled down over her eyes, but were quickly corrected with a curt shake of her head.

He didn't need more encouragement, and was quickly upon her, aiming a blow at her collarbone that she managed to block. She struck out with a kick to his stomach that made him groan in surprise; she took this advantage and quickly struck back at his jaw, giving him good cause for a well-used expletive.

Orion did not waste another moment before he aimed a tightly-clenched fist forward, at her cheekbone, yet feinted back and returned with a powerful roundhouse to where his fist would have landed.

She cried out in surprise and mingling pain, and stumbled in shock, a loud ringing and numbing white noise echoing in the back of her head. Diana struggled to regain her bearings and kicked forward, making him step backwards; she had missed him by a mile.

"How agile." He deadpanned, and it only made her more furious, as she fought through the haze of pain and numbness towards him and propelled the ball of her fist towards his chin. He looked down as it connected, making a loud smack and giving way for a red welt that would stay.

He struck her shoulder, lashing out, but she grabbed his arm in retribution, almost as if she were planning to wrest it from him. Orion found himself in appreciation of his arm and desired it to stay in his socket, so he resorted to pushing her forward with a harsh shove, that made the two of them tumble to the ground in a flurry of hands fumbling for air and with a gasp of breath left their lungs but rudely regained as the ground rose up to meet them.

It connected first with the full of Diana's back, the dull, throbbing pain in her back increasing as he pinned her down, not sparing her the weight of his body in an effort to be chivalrous.

There was no way or trying to shove him off by brute force, although she writhed and struggled, oh, she did. The most she was able to do was crane her neck up, to see where and how she was pinned below him, and see exactly where her leg was, nestled perfectly in between his.

Her leg swung up and he stiffened in surprise but made no further noise, save the grunt when Diana seized her chance and flipped him onto his back and reversed their positions, putting herself above him. She brusquely shoved her arm into his larynx, effectively cutting off all and any form of communication from his end.

"Are you ready to concede, Orion?" she smiled down at him, and it was a beautiful, beatific smile that even the likes of he could admire. Although considering the position he was caught in, it was not the most ideal time at which to do so.

The most of a response was the slightest flex of his muscles as they moved, running taut, and she arched an eyebrow but could do no more before his arms twitched upwards and she found her hold over him weakened.

"Don't count on it." He replied, with the breath he could spare, and then knocked his head forward, upwards, to connect with Diana's skull in a solid _thunk_ that made her see stars dance before her vision (by Hera, his helmet was something to be reckoned with!) and allowed him to throw her off his body and rise to his feet, as did she, shakily, as he did.

"I believe this places us somewhat at a tie, _Princess." _Orion mockingly used her nickname as they stood, regarding each other, him with a smirk she wished she could have wiped off his face with a slap of her hand, and she with a glare that would certainly have stunned one at its statuesque beauty and unadulterated spite.

"It does no such thing, _coward."_ She replied, brow furrowing. "You're too scared to finish what you've started."

"Am I? I believe you have prior engagements, and while I am not averse to continuing, my purpose here is done."

"And what exactly was your purpose?" Diana asked, confusion sneaking up upon her rage, blotting it out for a moment.

"Relieving your anger. A warrior can tell when his fellow has rage to vent."

Something clicked in her brain as her eyes widened in comprehension and disbelief.

"You _provoked_ me…to _help _me?"

"Better that than bringing the room upon your ears."

"You're one to talk."

"But did it not help?" he asked, and there was a vindicated smile on his face. Although she refused to admit it, the fight actually _had_ helped, in some way, by relieving the tension better than against an unfeeling punching bag that could no better understand her than she it.

Diana did nothing more than exhale sharply through her nose and fold her arms over each other. She regarded him with a steely gaze, and he chose (wisely) to continue, lest she decide to release the rest of her rage upon him.

"If I have your attention, then allow me to propose something," he said, and his voice dripped with mocking, sarcastic reverence towards her, "That in so calling a tie, you return here at the same time tomorrow, so that we may come across a definitive victor."

"A rematch?" she asked, tilting her head to the side, cocking an eyebrow as her interest was piqued, though she would not dare admit it to a provoking swine like him.

"If you desire a better way to rid yourself of your pining for your comrade, yes."

That certainly did sound promising; although she wasn't sure it would be able to wash away the sting of seeing Bruce with Zatanna, still, it would be extremely satisfying to be able to make Orion admit that she was the victor tomorrow. At the very least, it would be cathartic, and she found few disadvantages to such an arrangement.

"Very well." She said, smiling at him with a polite smile of undisguised bloodlust. "I look forward to it."

"As do I." he said, and she nodded to him, rage dissipating as she went to collect her scarf, lying limply on the ground. In a fluid motion, she wrapped it once more about her neck before smoothing out her hair so that it returned to the perfect, raven-black waterfall that cascaded down her back. Silently, she repaired the wrinkles in her clothes from the fight, gave him one last smile, and then strode out the door as it hissed open and then hissed shut behind her, leaving Orion alone within the room with a heart still beating fast from the thrill of the fight and more.

After a moment, perfectly still as he watched her go, he reanimated to life. Then, he turned to continue to relieve the rest of his tension on a nearby punching bag, the dull, rhythmic thud against his hand becoming a slow, steady beat that echoed in his mind and around the empty walls of the training room, returning once more to reality and the normalcy that accompanied it.


End file.
